The International Public Competition for the extension of the Orani museum, dedicated to Costantino Nivola, requires an ambitious, dificcult and delicate project:
1 – Ambitious because it intends to emphasize Nivola’s artistic path;
2 – Difficult as it tries to re-create a life’s intellectual path transforming it into spaces that are searching to describe an artistic activity developed in the latest century. Difficult in the attempt to synthesize it all.
3 – Delicate since it requires an intervention in an existing structure that is, already, an exhibition path integrated in the landscape.

Nivola’s artistic life is clear in the exhibition path, in the spatial sequence. It makes noticeable the importance of keeping the functional programme in a sequence of pavilions connected to each other by external areas. Some of these external areas exist already. The main purpose is to create a “small” town that will be related to the landscape and facing the old town. A unified museum complex will be created around the open air spaces.
To define the new spaces and organise the new path some elements were taken in consideration:
1 – the rehabilitation of the ancient structure;
2 – the extension created by Peter Chermayeff and Umberto Floris;
3 – the landscape planning in a terrace system;
4 – the natural conditions of the site and the nearby mountain.
The new ensemble has 9 buildings (two of those existing aleady and one that is partially under the ground) that create the exhibition path by using the associated external spaces. The project is developed around a “square” that connects the internal and external spaces (terrace system), created by Chermayeff-Floris. The result is a journey around the artist’s life, a new exhibition path conceived from the landscape analysis that considers the existing project and develops a new urban tissue in the downtown.
The materials applied on the external areas are the same of those existing already, in order to maintain the image of the Chermayeff-Floris project. The interior pavements are covered with stone and the walls of the exhibition areas with stucco. This neutral structure emphasizes the perspective on Nivola’s works.
We studied the possibility of using renewable energies: solar panels for water heating; solar glass to produce electrical energy; plastic materials that reduce production costs (75%); rain water reuse.